Android Leads U.S. Market, BlackBerry and iPhone Not Far Behind

Corroborating Nielsen’s survey, comScore has released a study showing the progress of mobile platforms in the U.S. in the three months leading up to January. Android grew 7.7% since October, and captured 31.2% of the market share, followed by BlackBerry, which was down 5.4% to 30.4%, and the iPhone which stayed steady at 24.7%. As far as manufacturers go, Samsung is the top dog, claiming 24.9% mobile phone owners, followed by LG with 20.8%, Motorola at 16.5%, RIM at 8.6%, and Apple at 7%.

The survey also ran down mobile content usage, and as you might imagine, the majority (68.1%) used their phones for sending text messages, while 37% used the browser, 35% used apps, 25% accessed social networks, 23% played games, and only 16% listened to music. I would have thought for sure music would have been higher on the list, what with decent-sized microSD memory cards available and lots of palatable mobile music apps and services available.

Overall, not many surprises in this data. Android’s lead is only set to grow as manufacturers invest more and more into the platform and software developers want their apps on the widest array of handsets possible. It’s sad for me to see BlackBerry losing ground, and with iPhone not far behind, it’ll be a close race over the next couple of months.

If you say market share is important because it leads to more software and developer support then you HAVE to include all iOS devices as developers are only interested in the total size of the operating system platform capable of running their apps.

Guess what, the installed base for iOS is FAR larger than all Android devices combined:

*Installed base* – “There will be an installed base of 140 million Android portable devices, including smartphones and tablets, by the end of 2011” according to IMS Research. – iOS installed base (Dec 2010) = 160 million with the vast majority of those added in the last 2 years. With Apple shipping 33 million iOS devices in q4 2010, the projected iOS installed base will hit somewhere north of 250 million by the end of 2011 if current iOS sales rates stay the same. However, iOS sales rates have been doubling every year so this figure is enormously conservative.

If you say market share is important because it leads to more hardware peripherals like cases, dock-equipped hifi systems, clock radios, car integration etc etc, then the number of common form factor, dock connector equipped iOS devices again vastly exceeds any individual Android device leading to a complete dearth of Android peripherals, cases, and other hardware.

If you say market share is important because it leads to more manufacturer profits, then despite having only 4.7% of the entire worldwide cellphone market, Apple is raking in 51% of the industry profit (up from 48% the previous year) vs 1% for Motorola, 2% for Samsung, -2% for LG and 17% for Nokia.

However, even if Android does eventually surpass iOS in installed base sometime several years in the future, it still won’t matter for developers because they make FAR more from iOS than they do from Android:

*App Store Revenue 2009 – 2010* (source: IHS): – iOS App Store grew from $769 million to $1.782 billion = $1.013 billion increase – Android Marketplace grew from $11 million to $102 million = $91 million increase So annual Android developer income is a meagre 6% of iOS with an annual rate of increase only 9% as large as iOS. The gap between the two is 1,000% and getting far larger every year.

*Advertising income per user* (source: Mobclix) Mobclix’s Jan 2011 stats demonstrate that in the Advertising game, iPhone users are far more valuable than Android users. In the Games category, the average iPhone user brought in more than double the advertising revenue per month compared to the average Android user, a third more income in the entertainment category and 30% more in the utilities category. Even on Google’s home turf – advertising – iOS beats Android.

I don’t care which OS developer earn more. I am enjoying the Android and its beauty. Why should I pay the premium price for iPhone and buy each and every app while I can enjoy those apps for free on android.